#Rainbowsnippet #Sciencefiction Nineteen 10/28 Distraction

This has been a horrifically unproductive week for me, writing wise, but I hope to break that trend this weekend. Crap weather. We’re staying in. That should do the trick.

However, this made my week a bit brighter. Surrogate, the first novel in the Surrogate series has received a Rainbow Awards Honorable Mention. You can read the brief review HERE. I’ll take what I can get, and this gem earned me a second five-star rating on Amazon, which I thoroughly appreciate.

And, of course, it’s Saturday again, and that means it’s time for Rainbowsnippets, a blog hop where diverse writers all share six sentence snippets from their works.

This week’s Rainbowsnippet* comes from Surrogate: Hunted. I’m still waiting patiently on edits to come back to me.

The Setup: After Etain spends nine days as Rntys and her crew’s Toy, she’s finally reunited with her goddaughter, Brigit. Etain waits until Brigit is asleep before she undresses and is standing under their cell’s tepid shower, trying to wash the memories away as this snippet begins.

Reminder: The Cycalks only speak Etain’s native language, Alyward, when it suits their purposes, which it does here.

Oh, and, yes, this is over six sentences. Forgive me, but I was trying to complete the thought. Next week will be back on track.

She couldn’t forget, especially the last few days when she’d been shoved into a large room— a seemingly endless space where the fake trees had become a forest. They’d hunted her there, again and again, telling her to run, to hide. She was easy prey the first few times, and her beatings had been severe.

“Too easy. No sport,” claimed one of the Cycalk men when he hauled her in for scoring. “Make her crew meat.”

“Not yet.” Rntys had beaten her worse than ever, telling her she was too astute, too much a fighter to be so easily caught. “You want to fight, so fight!”

She’d improved after that, becoming better at avoiding capture, and managed a few unarmed sneak attacks that disqualified the hunter involved. That’s when beatings had eased then stopped. Rntys had given her extra cullea and allowed her to rest between hunts, so she became even better at evading them.

A game. They weren’t hunting her to kill her. No, they were hunting her to fill the boredom of space flight. Toy was the right name, because that’s all I am to them…all any of us are. Entertainment and a full belly— their lives were otherwise worthless.

*RainbowSnippets is a safe and welcoming space for LGBTQIA+ authors, readers, and bloggers to share six sentences each week from a work of fiction—published or in progress—or a book recommendation. Feel free to join in!

15 comments

You know where she comes from, so take that knowledge, apply this situation, and you’ll see Etain’s survival instinct is epic-level strong. But there are always repercussions to such things. They do, in the long run, take their toll.

What I didn’t share is a scene where Etain refuses to submit to a Human man they place her with. In fact, she flattens him, and, in turn, her captors kill him. The Toy episode is the result. So, yes, they admire her in a way.

Author of far-off, complex alien societies & whisperer of ancient, natural-magic worlds set close to home. Slapper of paint and ripper of paper so that it pleases the eye. A differently-abled, green-thumbed, witchy soul. Parent, spouse, & and frustrated cat wrangler. She/they and prolific user of “ain’t” despite the trying who has now run out of descriptive adjectives, but you can still read more HERE.